The Complexity of Islam

Posted On 24 Jun 2016 / 0 Comment

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Let’s get one thing straight… right from the get-go. I am not pro-Islam or pro-Muslim. (The former is the religion. The latter is a name for those who practice the former.) I am not anti-Christian or anti-American. (I consider myself to be the former and am at least one-half the latter. My dad was born here in Chattanooga. My late mother and I were born in Bedford, England. I still have dual citizenship, though my most recent passports have been U.S.-issued.) All that being said… I am very much anti-ignorance and I most likely have more positive experiences with Muslims than most Americans… and most Chattanoogans…

…I lived in Turkey from seventh through half of tenth grade. I’ve written about this before, but it has been a while. Dad was in the U.S. Air Force at the time. He used to listen to the then-Soviet air-to-air and air-to-ground radio traffic for a living. (My Dad still speaks a little bit of Russian and is, in general, a really smart guy.) While we lived in Turkey (which was fantastic, in the part where we lived), we had a Turkish gardener/handyman and a Turkish maid. Ibrahim and Robbi. We weren’t wealthy, by any stretch of the imagination, but such services came pretty cheap on our base. Everyone had such help. Ibrahim and Robbi were both hard-working and decent people. We also had a Turkish female friend, “Vicki” (I never knew her given name) who worked at the base PX. (The only retail outlet on base, other than the grocery and liquor stores.) Vicki was… hot. She dressed in fairly tight-fitting “Western”-style garb and she made my young hormones go a bit crazy. Vicki was also a great person…

…Fast forward to six or seven years ago. I played rec league soccer at the North River Y with a guy named Sean. Sean and I didn’t get along at first, but eventually became good friends. It happens. I often initially don’t get along with guys who are too much like me. Sean’s then-girlfriend was a Pakistani… and a Muslim. Sean eventually moved to Seattle with her. He converted to Islam and changed his name a bit. They got married and now have one really cute kid… and another on the way…

…Those of you have read my writings more than occasionally know I am prone to some rambling. Again… it happens. I offered up the earlier introduction to give you some context. I shared my brief tales of Ibrahim, Robbi, Vicki, Sean, and his family because I know that most of you don’t actually know any Muslims. That is not an indictment against anyone. It’s just a fact. To most Americans and most Chattanoogans, Muslims are associated with terror and terrorism. Here in Chattanooga, the word “Muslim” will forever be linked with the horrible July 15, 2015, murders by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez… who killed five innocent U.S. military personnel and shook this community to its core…

…I suppose Americans and Chattanoogans can be forgiven for their ignorant (in the truest sense of the word) views on Islam and Muslims. But here’s the thing, there are about 1.5 BILLION Muslims in the world. They make up about 22 percent of the world’s population. Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country, with well over 209 million practitioners of Islam. Pakistan, where Sean’s wife’s family comes from, is second with over 176 million Muslims. India is third at over 167 million; Bangladesh… fourth at over 133 million. When most Americans think of “Muslims,” they think of Arab Muslims. Egypt, with over 77 million, is the world’s fifth-largest Muslim country. Iran, with over 73 million Muslims, comes in seventh. Turkey, where I used to live, is eighth at over 71 million. Iraq and Syria don’t even crack the global top 10…

…Fareed Zakaria, an outstanding CNN broadcast journalist, recently produced a show for the network called “Why They Hate Us.” Zakaria, an Indian-born Muslim, took a close look at the U.S.-Muslim conflict from “their” perspective. Let me repeat that I am neither pro-Muslim nor anti-American. Let me also state that we are in the middle of a conflict with “global Islamic terrorism” (there, I said it) that will last generations. We will never endure, let alone triumph, if we don’t try to get in the terrorists’ heads and figure out what motivates them. From their perspective, the U.S. has killed between 150,000 and 200,000 innocent civilians in the Iraq war alone. From their perspective, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein while he used chemical weapons on Iran… and then on his own people. From an Iranian perspective, the U.S. overthrew an elected government to install the Shah… and later shot down an Iranian airliner in Iranian airspace, killing 290 people. From a Muslim perspective, American “drone pilots” now sit in air-conditioned bunkers and fire Hellfire missiles with impunity…

…Am I saying these various Muslims are right and America is dead wrong? No. What I’m saying is that Americans are being deceived and misled by their own government and jumping to conclusion about almost a quarter of the world’s population based on this faulty information. We will never stop global Islamic terrorism without the help of the Muslims who are truly dismayed by the bastardization of their faith. We will never understand Islam and its followers until we can see Muslims as the individuals they are and not some abstraction that we are being sold by a country that has earned at least some of their anger and lied to its own citizens…